Plagiarism in Their Own Words: What Chinese and American Students Say about Academic Dishonesty[1]

ZHANG Cong Department of English, Purdue University (USA)

Abstract

This study investigates perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism by Chinese ESL students and American students with questionnaire and interview as the main sources of data. It was found that Chinese students exhibited less knowledge of plagiarism than American students due to a lack of previous instruction. Chinese students showed different perceptions about some cases of plagiarism such as using memorized words without citing, which may have been caused by the emphasis on memorization in Chinese learning culture. However, Chinese students held similar attitudes toward plagiarism; that is, they thought it was morally wrong and should not be tolerated unless it was unintentional Based on the findings, this paper calls for Chinese scholars to spend more time addressing the problem by making it part of the curriculum.

Key words: plagiarism; student ethics; Chinese and American student comparison; perceptions and attitudes

1. Introduction

With the development of globalization, the past decade has witnessed more than a 10-fold increase in the number of international students in Western countries, including the US, UK, Australia and others (Gu & Brooks, 2008; Haan, 2009). The dramatic increase in the number of international students in Western countries has placed inter-cultural communication in the spotlight of research on second/foreign language teaching, among which one important and frequently discussed issue is international students and plagiarism. There seems a prevalent belief that international students are more prone to plagiarize than their native counterparts (Deckert, 1993; Marshall & Garry, 2006; Martin, 2012; Sowden, 2005). With an easy and quick definition being “the action or practice of taking someone else’s work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one’s own” (Oxford English Dictionary), plagiarism is in no way a simple issue. Instead, as scholars have argued, the concept of plagiarism is “fully embedded within a social, political, and cultural matrix that cannot be meaningfully separated from its interpretation”（Scollon, 1995, p. 23), and therefore “needs to be understood in terms of complex relationships between text, memory, and learning”(Pennycook, 1996, p. 201). This connection between culture, memory, learning, and plagiarism has directed scholars, attention to students from non-Western cultures, especially those from cultures that emphasize memorization and are, therefore, different from Western culture where the notions of plagiarism and text ownership were developed and which emphasizes the originality of works and creativity of authors (Pennycook, 1996).

The above discussion may have served as a potential cause to put Asian students and NESB (non-English speaking background) students, who are usually stereotyped as more likely to plagiarize than their native counterparts, in the center of research on plagiarism(Deckert, 1993; Martin, 2012; Sowden, 2005). Among Asian students, Chinese students are even more stereotyped and stigmatized (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005; Bloch & Chi, 1995; Deckert, 1993; Hayes & Introna, 2005; Shei, 2005) in that many scholars believe the Chinese culture places great emphasis on memorization and thus memorizing and rote learning have become Chinese students’ learning style (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005; Chan, 1999; Deckert, 1993; Hayes & Introna, 2005; Introna, Hayes, Blair, & Wood, 2003; Pennycook, 1996) which plays a role in shaping students, preferred ways of text incorporation (Bloch & Chi, 1995). Seeing the influence of memorizing on Chinese students as a potential cause for plagiarizing, some scholars claim: “The Chinese have no education in the real sense of the word. No attempt is made as a simultaneous development of the mental powers. These are all sacrificed to the cultivation of memory” (Frederick Stewart, 1865，p. 138，as cited in Pennycook, 1996, p. 219). At the same time, however, other scholars have shown more empathy and understanding for Chinese students in that they think “what is taken as plagiarism is often one of the routes Chinese learners use to achieve competence in writing”(Shei, 2005，p. 97). This discrepancy in scholars’ attitudes toward Chinese students vis-à-vis the issue of memorizing and plagiarism has generated much research.

Previous research has covered a wide range of regions in the first place—America(Martin, 2012; Martin, Rao, & Sloan, 2011)，Britain (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005; Gu & Brooks, 2008; Hayes & Introna, 2005; Introna et al., 2003), Australia (Lahur, 2004; Maxwell, Curtis, & Vardanega, 2008; Song-Turner, 2008), and China (Hu & Lei, 2012; Zhang, Li, & Duan, 2008), and methodologies in the second—questionnaires (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005; Deckert, 1993; Hayes & Introna, 2005; Introna et al., 2003; Martin, 2012; Maxwell et al., 2008)，interviews (Hayes & Introna, 2005; Hu & Lei, 2012; Introna et al., 2003; Matalene, 1985; Pennycook, 1996), written texts (Lahur, 2004; Shi, 2004; Weigle & Parker, 2012), and case studies (Li & Casanave, 2012). Despite the plethora of research on plagiarism, scholars have failed to find common ground. Some scholars find differences between Chinese students and native students regarding plagiarism. Deckert (1993) reported Chinese students knew little about plagiarism; Pennycook (1996) and Bamford and Sergiou (2005) found Chinese students had different perceptions of the notion and cases of plagiarism; Rawwas, Al-Khatib, and Vitell (2004) reported that Chinese students perceived academic dishonesty as more acceptable than American students; Shi (2004) observed differences in copying sentences and referencing between Chinese students and native students.

However, Myers (1998) remarked that, “despite the stereotype of foreign students who plagiarize, plagiarizing goes on among U.S. students as well” (p. 12). Other scholars, by conducting empirical research, also found the two groups of students (Chinese students and native English speaking students) very similar. Introna et al. (2003) reported similar perceptions of plagiarism between Chinese and British students. As for the “ratings of perceived seriousness of understanding of plagiarism,” Maxwell et al. (2008, p. 25) found no differences between Australian and Asian students (Chinese students included). Martin et al. (2011) and Martin (2012) both reported no significant differences in plagiarism between Asian (Chinese students included) and American students and criticized the stereotypical view of Chinese students.

The different methodologies used, the various backgrounds of native students, and the different groups of Chinese participants (i.e., undergraduate and graduate students) may all have caused the discrepancies in the findings of previous research. Moreover, despite the wide coverage of research on Chinese students and plagiarism, a large portion of those studies either surveyed students’ knowledge of plagiarism using simple questionnaires or examined text incorporation in students’ writing products through text analysis. Only a small number of the studies looked at the deeper layers of the issue of plagiarism using interviews (Hayes & Introna, 2005; Hu & Lei, 2012; Introna et al., 2003), among which some studies (Hayes & Introna, 2005; Introna et al., 2003) examined academic dishonesty in a general sense with plagiarism being a minor part rather than the focus of the studies. Others (Hu & Lei, 2012) studied students’ perceptions of “two forms of intertexuality, i.e., unacknowledged copying and paraphrasing” (p. 813). However, one of the most important elements, i.e., the perceptions of different cases that are regarded as plagiarism in Western academic communities and the attitudes toward plagiarism of Chinese students, was not thoroughly investigated.

The lack of research that focuses on Chinese students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward various kinds of plagiarism using interviews and the contradictory findings of previous research both require more research to be conducted. Therefore, to fulfill the requirement, this study aims to explore Chinese ESL students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism and endeavors to answer the following research questions:

(1) Do Chinese students have a clear understanding of the notion of plagiarism? If not, what is the nature of their misunderstanding?

(2) Are Chinese students, and American students’ perceptions of cases of plagiarism the same? If not, how are they different?

(3) Are Chinese students’ and American students’ attitudes toward plagiarism the same? If not, how are they different?

2. Methodology

Many studies on plagiarism have been conducted that ask students if they have ever plagiarized or that ask for students’ knowledge of plagiarism. However, these forms of research cannot in themselves provide reliable and convincing findings, as the selfreported results may not be accurate, and questionnaires alone cannot reveal students’deeper thoughts and understandings. Therefore, in the present study, a questionnaire with “yes or no” questions was first used to elicit students’ self-reported knowledge of plagiarism. Later, “what, how, and why” questions as well as cases requiring students’judgments were followed to explore what students really know about plagiarism. Finally, interviews were employed to elicit the deeper thoughts of students to supplement the results of the questionnaire, so that questions including whether Chinese students have the same understanding of plagiarism as their native speaking peers, what misunderstandings Chinese students may have with regard to plagiarism, and what attitudes Chinese students and American students hold toward plagiarism, could be fully investigated.

2.1 Participants

The participants in this study were 27 Chinese students and 17 American students enrolled in a large public university in the United States. Of the 27 Chinese participants, 16 were males and 11 were females; 19 were freshmen, six were sophomores and two were juniors; their ages ranged from 18 to 21, with an average age of 19.1. They came from different majors including Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Management, Explorative Studies, Accounting, Mathematics, and Economics. Except for five students who received their high school education in the US, all of the other 22 finished their high school in China. Among the 17 American participants, ten were males and seven were females; ten were freshmen, three were sophomores and four were juniors. Similarly to the Chinese participants, their ages ranged from 18 to 21 with an average age of 18.9 years. All of them finished their high school in the US. Their majors included Engineering, Biology, Chemistry, Elementary Education, Hospitality and Tourism Management, Liberal Arts, and Economics and were therefore also diverse. A detailed profile of the participants is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Participants’ profile

2.2 Data Collection

Data were collected by using questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaire, adapted from Deckert (1993) and Maxwell et al. (2008)，contained three parts. The first part asked for students’ demographic information, which included their age, gender, year in school, major, nationality, and the place where they finished their high school education. The second part included questions asking for students’ self-reported understanding of plagiarism, previous instruction on plagiarism, and attitudes toward plagiarism. The last part included 10 cases and asked students to judge whether these cases were plagiarism and to rate their acceptability. The semi-structured interviews were used to elicit more information from students with regard to their perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism.

Before the questionnaire was distributed to the participants, a pilot study was conducted with five Chinese students and four American students, enrolled at the same university, to test the applicability of the instrument. Based on the results of the pilot study and suggestions of the students participating in the pilot study, modifications were made to the original questionnaire.

The pilot study revealed that students had sufficient proficiency in English to allow the questionnaire to be administered in English to both populations. For the Chinese participants, the questionnaire was administered in a single class period (50 min) of their first year composition course. The students were given the whole class period to finish the survey, but most of the students finished it within half an hour. For the American participants, the questionnaire was administered via email. Altogether the researcher distributed the questionnaire to 30 Chinese students and 20 American students. After the questionnaires were handed in, 27 Chinese responses and 17 American responses were found to be valid and constituted the questionnaire data for this study.

Six Chinese students and four American students participated in the interviews. Considering students’oral proficiency, the interview was conducted in English, too. However, in case some Chinese participants had difficulty expressing themselves in English, they were told to feel free to code-switch between English and Chinese. The interviews were all conducted in the researcher’s office with a quiet environment suitable for conversing. All the interviews were recorded with the consent of the interviewees. Interviews with the Chinese students lasted from 15 to 20 minutes, while the interviews with the American students lasted for about 10 minutes because the conversation with Chinese students often touched upon their confusion about plagiarism and the influence of Chinese on their English writing, which were not discussed with the American participants.

2.3 Data analysis

After the students’ responses to the questionnaires were obtained, they were first coded using pseudonyms so that later the interview transcripts could be matched with the questionnaire responses.

Students’ responses to the questions with yes or no answers and their demographic information were first inputted into a spreadsheet in which the students’ answers were analyzed through mathematical calculation; students’ judgments of cases of plagiarism were then marked right or wrong. Students’ responses to the open-ended questions were typed into a Word document. The interview recordings were transcribed and categorized based on the themes found in students’ responses to the questionnaire, to the interview questions, and the research questions.

3. Results and Discussion

This section reports the results of data analysis to address the three research questions. Sections 3.1 and 3.2 report the answer to the first research question—“Do Chinese students have a clear understanding of the notion of plagiarism? If not, what is the nature of their misunderstanding?”Section 3.1 recounts the students’ reported knowledge of plagiarism and their previous instruction on plagiarism. Section 3.2 discusses the confusion of Chinese students. Section 3.3 discusses the second research question— Chinese and American students’perceptions of plagiarism—by examining their responses to the ten cases related to plagiarism with the assistance of tables that summarize the results and by more detailed discussions following the tables. Finally, Section 3.4 provides the answer to the third research question—students, attitudes toward plagiarism—through probing the participants’ answers to the questions whether plagiarism is a moral issue and whether plagiarism should be tolerated.

3.1 Students’ reported knowledge of plagiarism

This section reports students’ knowledge of plagiarism in three areas: students’knowledge of the word plagiarism and its definition, previous instruction received on plagiarism, and students’ self-reported degree of understanding of plagiarism. Table 2 summarizes the overall results, while a detailed report of results and discussions is in the following subsections.

Table 2. Students’ self-reported knowledge of plagiarism

3.1.1 Students’ definitions of plagiarism

As shown in Table 2, when asked if they knew the word plagiarism, all participants, American and Chinese alike, claimed that they did. All the American students were able to provide an accurate definition of plagiarism such as “using others’ words as one’s own.” However, some Chinese participants, when asked to provide a definition of plagiarism, revealed their misunderstanding. For example, some students answered,“Copying others’ exam was plagiarism and if you did that, you would get zero on the exam” (Student C11). This indicates this respondent’s misunderstanding of plagiarism as cheating, which may have been caused by the similarity of Chinese translations for plagiarism “Chaoxi, Piaoqie” and cheating “Chaoxi, Zuobi” with Chaoxi (copying) being applicable to both words. Despite the existence of misunderstanding, most Chinese students could relate plagiarism to copying others’ words. In comparing these findings to Deckert’s (1993), an advance in Chinese students’ knowledge of the term plagiarism is observed over the past twenty years.

What is also worth noting although not shown in the table is that the definitions provided by Chinese students who received their high school education in the US were very close to the definitions provided by American students and were more accurate than the other Chinese students as shown in the following quotations: “Plagiarism refers to the action that one uses other’s articles, or even ideas as their own works” (Student C7) and “Plagiarism is that you take other people’s words as your own” (Student C4). This result is consistent with the findings from Song-Turner (2008)，who found “the longer students were immersed in the Australian educational environment, the closer their definition moved towards the Western view” (p. 42). This indicates the influence of the Western learning environment on Chinese students’ knowledge of plagiarism and Chinese students’ willingness to accept the Western notion of plagiarism.

3.1.2 Previous instruction on plagiarism

All the American students reported they had received instruction on plagiarism both in elementary school and secondary school or high school, the earlier instruction being brief and the later more comprehensive. Interview transcripts provide a clearer picture on this point.

I learned about plagiarism late in elementary school when we started writing actual papers that we had to do research over ... They [instructors] told the various actions that were plagiarism. Copying others’ work without giving them credit. They said that it [plagiarism] was academic dishonesty and could get us failed out of the class and into the principal’s office. (Student A2)

Early on in elementary school perhaps third or fourth grade; learned how to cite properly in seventh grade. Plagiarism was made clear that it is an act of cheating by copying another person’s work such as a peer or a scholar whether it be from print or the web. The consequences explained in high school consisted of a failing grade for the paper, a failing grade for the class dependable upon the instructor, and sometimes suspension from school. (Student A3)

In contrast, more than half (51.9%) of the Chinese participants claimed having received no instruction before coming to the university. Among those who claimed having received instruction, they varied to a great extent as to the instruction they had received. Some received clear instruction when they were studying for their high school education in the US(e.g., Student C4); some heard the idea from their friends (e.g., Student C21); some learned about it from TV news (e.g., Student C10); some received instruction which was no more than a warning like “don’t copy” (e.g., Student C9). These differences are more visible when looking directly at the transcripts of the interviews.

In high school sophomore classes...those instruction said we need to cite others’ words and ideas, and we need to do it in a particular format, although I kind of forgot what those formats are. (Student C4)

My friend who is studying abroad told me about “what is plagiarism” before I came to university. I think it was ten months before. She told me that plagiarism was cheating. Copying other’s work or stealing other’s idea were both actions of plagiarism. She also told me about the consequences of plagiarizing. The course grade and personal credit will be affected. (Student C21)

The news said it is illegal behavior. Citizens have the right that their literary and mental output are protected. Plagiarizing behavior will lead people to be fined. (Student C10)

Teacher told us that do not copy the essay which you see on the book...Besides that, teacher didn’t say what actions were also plagiarism. So all I know about plagiarism is copying an essay is plagiarism. But I do not know if I copy a few sentences, that will count as plagiarism or not. (Student C9)

The result that many Chinese students have never received any instruction on plagiarism in China is in line with the results of Bamford and Sergiou (2005), and Zhang, Li, and Duan (2008). This suggests that a lack of systematic instruction on plagiarism in Chinese education may be a potential cause for Chinese students’ being accused of being more likely to plagiarize.

3.1.3 Students’ self-reported degree of understanding of plagiarism

When asked if they had a clear understanding of plagiarism, all the American participants believed they did. As for the Chinese students, most (70.4%) of them answered yes while the other 29.6% thought they did not have a clear understanding. However, the confidence demonstrated by both the American and Chinese students was not supported by their performances in judging the ten cases to be plagiarism or not. Only five American students and two Chinese students judged all ten cases correctly. The detailed results of their judgments will be reported in Section 3.3. The mismatch between the students’ self-reported knowledge of plagiarism and their real knowledge of plagiarism indicates that they may lack adequate self-awareness of what they really know about plagiarism; they thought they knew because they thought what they understood of plagiarism was what plagiarism was really about. This mismatch also calls for questioning students’ self-reporting ability. Therefore, other methodologies such as testing students’ judgments on plagiarism and interviews are needed to complement questionnaires and to obtain more reliable data.

3.2 Students’ confusion about plagiarism

Knowing about students’ confusion can help teachers understand better their knowledge and perceptions of plagiarism and enable teachers to help them gain a clearer understanding of plagiarism. All the American students reported they had no confusion about plagiarism and were very confident in their own understanding of plagiarism. In contrast, the Chinese students expressed confusion about the definition of plagiarism, consequences of plagiarizing, and, mainly, what actions were considered plagiarism. Regarding the first two aspects, i.e., the definition and consequences of plagiarism, students wanted to know what they were. But as for what actions constituted plagiarism, they expressed both confusion and concerns. One interviewee talked about his experience of using online resources and being accused of plagiarizing by his high school instructor in the US. He was writing an article on the danger of excessive drinking, but he could not think of many consequences himself. Therefore, he searched the Chinese website Baidu (a search engine used by most Chinese people and is equivalent to Google in the US) for more information. He read an article talking about the potential harm of drinking too much alcohol. Thinking it useful, he summarized that article and translated the summary into English. When asked why he did not cite the source from where he obtained that information by his instructor, he answered he wrote the essay himself. He was accused of plagiarizing afterwards since his instructor insisted that the potential harm of excessive drinking discussed in that essay sounded professional, and the student must have borrowed others’ information. In the interview, he asked me if I thought that was plagiarism. I said yes. He seemed very upset. I asked why he said that he wrote the essay himself and asked if he did not admit using online resources because he was afraid of being accused of plagiarizing. He said,

It was not that I dared not admit. It was that I did not think I was plagiarizing at all... because I did not copy the sentences, but I was just summarizing the article. In the process of summarizing, I added my own understanding and ideas. Therefore, I think that is not plagiarism.(Student C4)

This indicates that Chinese students may have different understandings of what actions constitute plagiarism. This non-Western understanding of plagiarism can be further evidenced in another interviewee’s reflections on his high school experience in the US.

I was shocked when my high school teacher caught me plagiarizing because I asked the father in my host family to revise my essay for me! I wrote the draft and asked him to edit for me. The idea was mine, and he was just helping me change the expressions. That [being accused of plagiarizing] was very discouraging... But I was not the only one. One of my classmates was accused only because he used one word from the video game WOW (War of Worldcraft) The teacher said that was a term and he [my classmate] could not write the word on his own. He must have copied it from someone else. (Student C14)

These comments indicate that Chinese students may have some confusion about what actions were plagiarizing; even if they were told by their instructors what plagiarism was, it might take them longer to digest and absorb the Western notion.

3.3 Judging plagiarism: a student perspective

Students were asked to judge if the ten cases were plagiarism and if they were acceptable behavior. Table 3 reports the overall judgments of the Chinese and American students. Table 4 presents detailed results for the students’ judgment and the correct response rate for each case.

3.3.1 Overall correctness of judgments

This study makes a distinction between Chinese students who received their high school education in China and those who received their high school education in the US. This division is reasonable because the results showed large differences in the correct response rates between these two groups of students, denoting that looking at all Chinese students together would be misleading, as shown in Table 3 and the discussion below.

Table 3. Correct responses of judgments

Note: CH-CH stands for the Chinese participants who received their high school education in China; CH-US stands for the Chinese participants who received their high school education in the US; CH-ALL stands for all the Chinese participants.

In Table 3, the “No. of correct judgments” displays the number of the cases where the students made correct judgments. “Min” refers to the minimum correct responses provided by the students; “Max” refers to the most correct responses provided by the students;“Mean” refers to the average number of correct responses provided by the students. It was calculated by the sum of the correct responses of all the participants in the group divided by the total number of the participants in that group. That being said, for example, the Min for the American students was six. This means that, among the 17 US participants, the one who provided the fewest correct judgments made six correct judgments on the ten cases, and all the others made equal to or more than six correct judgments on the ten cases. The Max for American students was ten. This means that, among the 17 US participants, the one who provided the most correct responses judged all ten cases correctly. The Mean for the American participants was eight, meaning that on average, every American student made eight correct judgments. It was calculated by dividing the sum of each American student’s correct responses by the total number of the American students.

Taking all the 27 Chinese students as a group, the fewest correct responses were four; the most correct responses were ten; and the average correct responses were seven. It can be seen that both the numbers of the fewest and the average correct responses of the 27 Chinese students were much smaller than those of the American students, signifying the differences between the understanding of plagiarism between these two groups of students. However, when the responses of the five Chinese students who received their high school education in the US were analyzed separately, the results showed that this group of students scored much higher: the fewest correct responses were eight; the most correct responses were ten; and the average was nine. With the five Chinese students separated from the larger group, the other 22 Chinese students had even fewer correct responses: four for the fewest; nine for the most; and six on average. This suggests that the American high school education influenced Chinese students’ judgments and perceptions of plagiarism and that “despite various intercultural challenges and struggles, most Chinese students...have managed to survive the demands of the learning environment, and to adapt and develop” (Gu & Brooks, 2008, p. 340). On the other hand, it signals the lack of instruction on plagiarism in Chinese high schools, which may have potentially caused students’ confusion and difficulty in understanding the notion of plagiarism. However, we should be cautious when interpreting these results since the number of the CH-US group is relatively small.

3.3.2 Students’ judgments on the ten cases

The students were asked to judge if the ten cases were plagiarism, and if those actions were acceptable regardless of those actions being plagiarism or not. Their judgments are shown in Table 4. In the table, “Plagiarism” means students judged that case as plagiarism;“Acceptable” means students considered that action acceptable. “Correctness rate” is the percentage of the number of the students who made the correct judgment for a certain case. Similar to the overall rate analysis, the Chinese students who received their high school education in the US and those graduating from a Chinese high school were analyzed separately; the results for this analysis are in Table 5.

Table 4. Students’ judgments on ten cases

Table 5. Chinese students’ judgments vis-à-vis where they attended high school

Note: CH-CH stands for the Chinese participants who received their high school education in China; CH-US stands for the Chinese participants who received their high school education in the US.“Plagiarism” and “Acceptable” are not mutually exclusive since students may judge one case as plagiarism yet still consider it acceptable.

When asked if hiring someone else to write the paper was plagiarism, all the American students agreed and thought that this was not acceptable. Similarly, most Chinese students(92.6%) also thought that action was plagiarism and found it unacceptable. However, two Chinese students felt it was not plagiarism. The reason might be that they did not think they got something for nothing, as shown more clearly in the account of one interviewee:

I think that [hiring someone else to write the paper] is not plagiarism... because hire means pay money, right? So I will pay the writer. I don’t steal his paper. He also got profits, too. If I saw his paper, and copied, or stole from him, and gave to my teacher as my own paper, that is plagiarism. (Student C9)

This account revealed that some students had different understandings of plagiarism.

The judgment of the case of using words that have been memorized without citing displayed a discrepancy between the Chinese and American students. Most American students (64.7%) believed that such an action was plagiarism, and thought it unacceptable. Conversely, Chinese students held the opposite opinion—only nine (33.3%) of all the 27 Chinese participants judged it to be plagiarism. Moreover, of the nine students who judged it as plagiarism, six considered it acceptable even if they thought it was plagiarism. A look at the five students who received their high school education in the US yielded more interesting results. Although three (60%) of them judged it plagiarism, having a similar correct response rate to their American counterparts (64.7%)，they had very different attitudes toward its acceptability; that is, all of the five believed it acceptable even though they knew it was plagiarism. This may indicate a far-reaching influence of the emphasis on memorization in Chinese learning culture. Many scholars have remarked on this. Martin (2012) has noticed,“Students from Asian backgrounds tend to use terms like ‘It is said. ...’ and ‘The first idea is...’ without mentioning the author specifically... Citations are not required because all of the knowledge comes from that single [text] book” (p. 264). Shei (2005) said, “In terms of learning to write, [Chinese] students are encouraged and (sometimes required) to read and memorize portions of classical works and use them in their own writing”（p. 98). The following words from an interviewee may provide a clearer picture of this.

In China, when we use a famous sentence, most of the time we can’t remember who said that in which essay said that. But we memorized the quote very well because our Chinese teacher required us to remember many poems and beautiful essays. In our exam, we are asked to write those memorized poems and essays, too, but we never cite. Also, when we write a composition in the exam [the writing section], if we use some of those sentences or poems without citing, we are not [accused of] plagiarizing. Instead, people think we are knowledgeable, and the teacher will give us a high grade. (Student C21)

When looking at the students’ judgments on the cases of “copying words from other’s articles by citing the source without using quotation marks” and “paraphrasing words from other’s articles by citing the source without quotation marks,” it was found that Chinese students, especially those who attended high school in China, were confused about those two cases. The correctness rates of judgments were low, suggesting that they lacked the knowledge that copying requires quotations marks while paraphrasing does not.

Regarding whether borrowing ideas without citing the source is plagiarism, 88.2% of the American students and 100% of the five Chinese students who finished high school in the US considered it plagiarism, while only 50% of the other 22 Chinese students judged it as plagiarism. This may be explained by one of the students’ accounts:

Borrowing ideas is common. I mean, when we were writing argumentative essays in Chinese in high school, we need to find evidence to support our position, but we cannot think enough reasons, so we Baidu [equivalent to Google] for more reasons. When we used those ideas in our essay, we never cited. Our teacher did not said that was wrong... Even if now you tell me I need to cite, I do not know how to cite it. (Student C9)

The Chinese students demonstrated different perceptions of plagiarism from the American students; nevertheless, concerning the cases that are “blatant copying”（Pecorari, 2008) or more serious cases, they had similar judgments and attitudes. When asked if “copying materials almost word for word from any source and turning it in as one’s own work” was plagiarism, 96.3% of the Chinese students considered it plagiarism and thus unacceptable. However, in other cases, they may have exhibited some misunderstanding. Not only did the Chinese students demonstrate confusion about and misunderstanding of plagiarism, but American students did so, too. For example, in the cases of “paraphrasing without using quotation marks” and “citing or referencing a source that’s not actually read,” the correct response rate was only 64.7%. Therefore, comparing Chinese students with American students does not mean that American students are the benchmark; they have some misperceptions, too. A more reasonable conclusion to draw may be that American students, having been educated in the Western academic learning environment, are more familiar with the Western notion of plagiarism.

3.4 Students’ attitudes toward plagiarism

Considering the differences between Chinese and American students’ perceptions of plagiarism, people may be tempted to draw the conclusion that these two groups of students would also exhibit different attitudes toward plagiarism. However, results from this study showed the opposite, as illustrated in Table 6.

Table 6. Students’ attitudes toward plagiarism

The majority of the students, Chinese students (59.3%) and American students (64.7%) alike, held the opinion that plagiarism should not be tolerated, as one American student commented,

I think it is all unacceptable because it is taking someone else’s work and saying that it is your own work. This is lying and since you are profiting through money or a grade it shouldn’t be done. (Student A2)

However, there are many students who believed that some plagiarism should be tolerated. When asked what kind of plagiarism could be tolerated in the interview, all the answers were about plagiarizing without self-consciousness, or to put it another way, it should be tolerated if the person did not intend to plagiarize, but did it accidently or unintentionally. The following transcripts provide the details.

Majority should not be tolerated at all, but there should be some exceptions such as a student writes an entire paper on an idea that they sincerely thought he or she created as their own and finds out from the instructor that there was an extremely similar thought out on the internet. (Student A8)

Some should be tolerated because there may be some reasons sometimes, like maybe some people forget to write the quotation marks on the paper. (Student C10)

When asked if plagiarism is an issue concerning morality, all American students answered yes, thinking plagiarism is “stealing and profiting on something that is not yours”（Student A2). Similarly, most Chinese students (88.9%) considered plagiarism a moral issue, too. This is consistent with the results of the studies conducted by other scholars, who found that most students think plagiarizing is morally wrong (Bamford & Sergiou, 2005; Song-Turner, 2008). However, there were three Chinese students who held a different opinion. These students held two kinds of opinions. The first was that whether plagiarism was a moral issue or not depended on the situation, as expressed by one interviewee:

Whether it [plagiarism] is a moral issue depends on the effect it causes—if someone copies from internet to finish homework or write diary for himself, this won’t harm the author, then it is not a moral issue; but if he copies or uses other’s work or idea and use it in his own paper, I mean, academic paper, this is a moral issue. (Student C10)

The other opinion, held by one student, was that plagiarism was not a moral issue. The interview transcript below may help clarify his thought:

I think it is just people being selfish with knowledge. I wonder why Western scholars require us to cite but the well-known Chinese poets or scholars never required us to cite them. They write poems and good essays for the public, the society, and even the whole world. When we use their sentences, we never quote, but people will know who the author is. (Student C24)

This indicated that although most Chinese students, like American students, consider plagiarism morally wrong, there are some Chinese students having a vague idea of text ownership and authorship that may have been influenced by the Chinese learning culture and writing style.